Latest Polkadot updates on January 24th

The Polkadot project has been quite active in the past month. Recently, they launched the Polkadot Hackathon Europe which begins on January 25th. Additionally, they have several upcoming events, such as the Polkadot Ecosystem Meetup in NYC and the Polkadot Hungary Meetup in Budapest. Moreover, the Referendum 100 has started which proposes to enable pre-compiled contracts on the network. Furthermore, various projects have made updates and announcements. For example, Giant Protocol announced that their parachain is live on Kusama Network and Astar Network updated their 2023 roadmap. Finally, Origin Trail has joined the Sustainable Medicines Partnership and Manta Network launched their MantaPay testnet v3. All in all, Polkadot has been busy with updates and events.

What is Polkadot ?

Polkadot is a decentralized blockchain network that provides a platform for interoperability between different blockchains. It allows for the transfer of any type of data or asset, not just tokens, between different blockchains. Using its advanced staking system, it is designed for maximum decentralization and fair representation, rewarding good actors and punishing bad actors to ensure network security.

Polkadot provides economic scalability by enabling a common set of validators to secure multiple blockchains. It also provides transactional scalability by spreading transactions across multiple parallel blockchains. Through the Substrate framework, users can create a custom blockchain in minutes and connect it to Polkadot, providing them with interoperability and security from day one. Polkadot also has a sophisticated governance system where all stakeholders have a voice and network upgrades are coordinated on-chain and enacted autonomously and without forking the network.

The DOT token serves three distinct purposes: governance over the network, staking and bonding. Token holders have complete control over the protocol, and can keep the network secure and collect rewards by staking DOT. New parachains can be added by bonding tokens, or outdated or non-useful parachains removed by removing bonded tokens.

Polkadot is energy efficient, consuming a small fraction of the energy used by conventional blockchains thanks to its nominated proof-of-stake (NPoS) model. It has the lowest carbon footprint among proof-of-stake protocols analyzed in recent research, using the equivalent of ~6.6 US households worth of energy per year.

Anyone can participate in staking with just 1 DOT through the new Staking Dashboard. With Polkadot, the multichain vision for Web3 starts here, allowing for the construction of a truly interoperable decentralized web.

This article was published on 2023-01-29 by Marc Endevor. Information shown in this article was gathered from the project’s website and Twitter account. Coinvestigate cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information, or any news that may have impacted the project in the meantime.